Between the rum or molasses imported from the West Indies in the earlier periods and the subsequent spread of rural distillation, brewing had scarcely any chance of a healthy development; nevertheless, it continued to be practiced in the principal towns, particularly where the German element preponderated. It was an economic fallacy of the age that in grain-growing countries agriculture could not possibly prosper without the distillery—a fallacy which prevailed in the northern countries of Europe and could not but find universal approval during the pioneer period of a new country where the means of transportation were exceedingly scant. In the rural districts the number of stills increased in proportion to their remoteness from the centers of civilization and in some parts whiskey actually took the place of money as a medium of barter, just as in a previous period rum had been the main stay of foreign commerce. In 1790 there were no less than 5,000 stills in operation in the State of Pennsylvania, that is to say, one still for every 86 of the population. Long before this period public attention had been directed by public writers and speakers to the temperate drinking-habits which prevailed in most of the German settlements, and naturally enough, on all such occasions, brewing was advocated as a means of promoting temperance. In his “Account of the manners of the German inhabitants of Pennsylvania,” Benjamin Rush dwells with particular emphasis upon the fact that these people, whom he praises for their probity, frugality, economy, love of liberty and country, commonly drink beer, wine and cider, and he makes this fact one of the principal arguments in favor of his famous temperance scheme. Many other writers then and thereafter coincided with him in this view; among them Tench Coxe who “considered it a fact strongly in favor of the industry, sobriety and tranquillity of Philadelphia that its breweries (at the beginning of the nineteenth century) exceeded, in the quantity of their manufactured liquors, those of all the seaports of the United States.” This may seem all the more remarkable on account of the growth of the distilleries after the abolition of the first Federal tax on spirits, brought about in a measure by the Whiskey Rebellion; but it will not in any way appear astonishing, if the character of the population of that city be borne in mind. Philadelphia beer had retained its reputation for excellent quality even during the era of free whiskey, when brewing throughout the country seemed to be in the last stages of hopeless decline; but it must not be supposed that in even this city of beer-drinkers the production kept anything like an equal pace with the increase of population. Enough has already been said on this subject in the chapters on brewing in New England and more will be said in the two chapters on the decline of brewing and on the rise of lager beer to render unnecessary a more detailed account.